Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Allen C. Browne
Taken: August 29, 2018
Caption: Thomas Nast
Self-Portrait, c. 1884
Additional Description: This self-portrait of Thomas Nast hangs in the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC.

“Born in Germany, Thomas Nast (1840-1902) immigrated to New York in 1846. Nast’s gifts for illustration and social observation found ready use in national mass-circulation news magazines that did not yet have means to publish photographs. He published more than three thousand drawings, primarily in Harper’s Weekly between 1862 and 1885.

Nast favored Union-affirming policies and enjoyed the relative autonomy to express his political views. His early cartoons skewered the corrupt regime of New York City’s William Marcy ‘Boss’ Tweed. Nast went on to popularize the elephant and donkey as symbols of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively.

Nast may have painted this self-portrait around 1884, when he lost his fortune in a Wall Street Ponzi scheme. It is perhaps a self-caricature. He renders himself with a furrowed brow, collapsed into a chair. An open drape reveals New York’s Trinity Church, and the foot of Wall Street.

Out of favor with his editor, Nast left Harper’s Weekly in 1887. He later joined the Democratic National Committee as a contract cartoonist but never recovered a national audience or financial position.” – Smithsonian Institution.
Submitted: August 30, 2018, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.
Database Locator Identification Number: p443389
File Size: 1.168 Megabytes

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